The Shrieking Calliope of Rage

I think Steampunk exists because the steam powered devices of the 19th century were so impressive to the senses. A steam locomotive fairly writhed with barely latent explosive potential. Even the safety relief valves that prevented the whole thing from rupturing into a multi-ton shrapnel device assaulted your ears with a screeching shriek that hardly spoke to any sane person’s mind of safety or relief. This impressiveness transfers well to the written page. A good writer can weave a word image of the sights and sounds and the feel of the vibrations and even the taste and smell of steam coming off one of these mechanical monsters. Off the top of my head, I can think of two examples from imaginative works. The first is the Calliope and Carousel from Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” The other is in the final scene in the boiler room from King’s “The Shining.” In both cases the steam powered engine is almost an entity in itself. A manic energy emanates from it and powers the action of the scene and drives the protagonist to attempt to disarm the menace of his shrieking foe.

So, where am I going with this? Oh come on, you know me by now. The hissing, sputtering, shrieking machine that threatens at any minute to explode from apoplectic rage is the MSM and its faithful audience. In the last week or so we have had any number of the usual suspects screaming, crying, cussing and threatening disaster over every and any action of the Administration. In some ways it is impressive. To keep up a hissy fit this long is no mean feat. Some of these individuals are not young and so you’d think the risk of stroke is not negligible. I’d say the most noteworthy instances to list were Stephen Colbert and Maxine Waters. Colbert had a meltdown over Trump disrespecting a CBS reporter named Dickerson. Colbert went into a rant against Trump and used some extremely derogatory sexual comments that even partisans of the left found offensive. Following that a few days later, he extemporized to his studio audience on the breaking news of FBI Director Comey’s firing and was chagrined when the crowd cheered the news. He claimed it was the result of a pro-Trump audience. More likely, his constant attacks on Comey for harming Hillary’s election chances temporarily confused the audience into forgetting that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. I’m sure he straightened them out on that right away.

Waters took the Comey firing as the one hundredth excuse, to once again, call for the immediate impeachment of Donald Trump. When asked if she would have supported Hillary Clinton firing Comey she said she definitely would. Wow.

In the olden days B.T. (before Trump), a republican president or Congress would quail and jibber under the endless assault of the outrage machine. A Bush or a McCain would waffle and kowtow to accusations of racism or sexism or just plain ism. They were a hapless bunch and the Media and the dems knew it. That’s why they are still hitting this play so hard. It always yousta work.

We may be in a golden period. A place in time where the libs are still using tactics that no longer work but before they figure out that they actually do real harm to their case. If this is the case then the trolling of Trump may actually be a very effective way of turning the public against the public positions of the left. Someone like Colbert blowing a fuse on screen might have a truly revelatory effect if at the same time an unapologetic President is managing to get things done in Washington at the same time.

As the inimitable Vox Day has noted SJWs always double down. If that is the case, then there may come a point when even the somnambulistic public wakes up to the fact that the Left has become a shrieking steam engine whose relief valve has been overwhelmed in furtherance of doubling down. And with any luck the Left will blow the whole thing sky high or run it right into a brick wall. If so I can make one last steam analogy reference, “God He stole the handle and the train won’t stop going, no way to slow down.”